Austrian Film Museum

The Austrian Film Museum is the country's central cinematheque, housed in the basement of the Albertina complex just steps from the Hofburg. It was founded in 1964 by filmmakers Peter Konlechner and Peter Kubelka, who also designed the museum's Invisible Cinema, a fully blacked-out auditorium aimed at eliminating every visual distraction. The collection holds more than 30,000 films from the silent era to contemporary experimental cinema, together with posters, stills and a specialist library. Programming runs in retrospectives devoted to single directors or thematic cycles, often projected from 35mm prints. Visitors do not come for a museum tour but for the daily screening schedule inside that dark, focused cinema hall.